Brazilian orange juice producer The Fischer Group has taken delivery of the 30,848m3 fruit juice tanker Orange Star from Croatia’s Brodosplit shipyard. It is the largest vessel in the owner’s now 10-strong fleet, all of the vessels in which are dedicated to the transport of concentrated orange juice from Santos, Brazil, to specialist terminals in Rotterdam, Ghent, Chiba and Port Manatee.
Brodosplit was approached after the owner chose to cancel an order to build two juice carriers at Lindenau, Germany, with the onset of the financial crisis and difficulties at the yard. While Brodosplit had never built a juice carrier, it had designed, built and delivered seven refrigerated vessels between 1981 and 2000, a track record which Neven Jug, director of Brodosplit’s sales and design division, says persuaded the owner to approach the yard with the idea of transforming an existing bulk carrier into a juice carrier.
“The deck openings were broadened, diesel generators enlarged and cargo hold insulation was installed,” says Mr Jug. “A shelter deck, cargo tanks and cargo pumping system as well as a refrigeration system and bow thruster were also added to the original design.” Cargo is loaded in a chilled condition and the ship’s refrigeration system cools the space between the cargo tanks and cargo holds structure.
The vessel has been optimised for trade from Brazil to New York to Rotterdam and is certified to carry unconcentrated juice (NFC), S.G. 1.052, at a temperature of -1°C and concentrated juice (FCOJ), S.G. 1.34 at a temperature of -10°C. The cargo space is divided into five holds. Cargo is carried in 14 cylindrical independent stainless steel tanks located in insulated cargo holds. The wing and double bottom tanks are utilised as segregated ballast tanks.
A single screw, fixed propulsion plant has an MAN B&W 6S50-MC-C7 at its heart to drive the vessel. The main engine, generators and boiler can operate on residual or distillate fuel and the vessel is equipped to change over to low-sulphur residual or distillate in the event of entering an emission control area.
Three MAN-supplied gensets, one with a capacity of 960kW and two with a capacity of 1,280kW each, supply current, and the network is backed up by a 277kW Caterpillar emergency set. A TPK NOVA with a design pressure of 7.9 bar provides steam for all heating requirements.
Container locking points are fitted on deck, meaning the number of containers to be carried as revenue-earning back cargo is small, otherwise a one-way ballast voyage ensues. A further vessel is under consideration. However, as yet it has not been contracted.
The Fischer Group was established in 1932 at the birth of the refrigeration transport era and now uses the most pioneering technology in all aspects of the transport of orange juice. In 1987 a conventional reefer was converted into a fruit juice tanker, a move that began an experiment which has grown into the orange juice transportation business it has today. From these initial beginnings with conversions, demand for concentrated fruit juice in global markets has led to state-of-the-art specialist tanker designs. The first conversion was only scrapped last year and, in the intervening 24 years, two more vessels have been converted and eight newbuildings added to the current fleet.
Fischer controls four orange-processing plants in Brazil and one in the USA, and operates juice terminals in Brazil, Belgium, Holland, Japan and the USA in a controlled logistical chain. After initially chartering tankers, the company ordered its first two directly owned ships from Kleven, Norway, taking delivery in 1993-94. A third vessel, directly delivered in 2002 from Kleven, was then the largest in the fleet, offering 27,500m3. It was appropriately named after Carlos Fischer, who spearheads company operations today. This 42,500 dwt carrier can transport up to 37,000 tonnes of orange juice.
The owner and yard worked with Norwegian research centre Marintek in Trondheim to carry out tank testing and hullform optimisation that would that would allow for a service speed of more than 20 knots with the main engine operating at 94 per cent of MCR in a 5 per cent sea margin and a nominal 1,200kW output from the shaft generator. As a result Carlos Fischer has a bulbous bow with a relatively sharp lower profile and is fairly flat on top. The aft hull has a very flat form running from the base line and incorporates a skeg which meets the run at a chine. It incorporates the main engine foundations and the bulb ahead of the propeller.
The final vessel dimensions were 204.85m length overall with a moulded breadth of 32.2m, a moulded depth of 19.2m and an operating draught of about 9.5m. As the building dock used at Floro had a length limit of 200m, the last 5m of the bulbous bow on the vessel was added later. The hull was subcontracted to a Romanian shipyard.
The company orders one or two ships every four to five years and it is noticeable that capacity is increasing all the time. The balance of the fleet is chartered from Switzerland-based Atlanship, which operates out of Rotterdam, with the exception of one independently owned Norwegian vessel. TST
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